My Spring Sellers’ Guide has covered what shows Netflix, Apple TV and Disney’s ABC, FX and Hulu are buying. I host Ankler Agenda and wrote about millennials’ challenges and Gen Z’s entry pains in the current jobs landscape. Email me at elaine@theankler.com
One of the first stories that Netflix exec Diego Ávalos wanted to tell at the streamer, when it became available in Spain a decade ago, was that of Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam winner who hails from Mallorca.
Ávalos, who now oversees original productions in Spain, Portugal and Turkey, had reached out to Nadal’s team back in 2015 or 2016, years before the King of Clay had publicly entertained the idea of retirement.
“It was super early, but we knew we wanted to be in conversation,” he tells me from Netflix’s offices in Madrid. “Obviously, Rafa wasn’t ready to tell his story.” But “the stars aligned” around two-and-a-half years ago, Ávalos continues, and “we were able to partner with Skydance to finally convince Rafa to come and tell his story and his legacy.”
It turns out Hollywood’s latest corporate villain, David Ellison, the man about to mash two legendary studios together in a merger many in Hollywood are hoping to thwart, helped make it happen.
As Nadal told former rival Andy Roddick on the latest episode of Roddick’s Served podcast, he “had a conversation with David Ellison — he’s the owner of Skydance, now Paramount, maybe more — and I think he convinced me that it was the right moment to do it. That’s something that’s going to stay forever there, and in some ways, an athlete like me should leave that [legacy].”
The result is the four-part docuseries Rafa, directed by Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Zach Heinzerling (Cutie and the Boxer, McCartney 3, 2, 1), that offers a vulnerable look at the tennis legend, revealing the extent of the constant pain he battled and the obsessiveness that nevertheless drove him to the top. It is one of two major tennis docs Netflix has on its slate this summer as it chases more sports viewers. The other, Chris & Martina: The Final Set, coming June 26 (after a June 10 premiere at Tribeca Festival), centers on the rivalry-turned-friendship between icons Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.
So ahead of the Friday release of Rafa, I spoke with Ávalos as well as Netflix’s head of documentaries Adam Del Deo and head of sports Gabe Spitzer to learn more about the streamer’s pursuit of tennis fans, plus its evolving sports doc and live sports strategies, and how they’re being remade around “the biggest leads in the world” after recent years’ deals with the WWE and more.
Today, I go inside Netflix’s new sports playbook and reveal:
- Del Deo’s hard lessons from Netflix’s last tennis doc, a misfire
- Why access, final cut and filmmaker chemistry matter more than a famous subject
- Why the famously obsessive Nadal relinquished control of the project
- How Netflix’s broader sports strategy has evolved, and what WWE has to do with it
- Why global rights matter — and the workaround when Netflix can’t get them
- Why tennis has boomed as a Hollywood power game
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